'Comey acted in an outrageous way during the campaign': Bernie Sanders suggests FBI director should resign

Sen. Bernie Sanders suggested FBI Director James Comey should
resign over how he conducted the FBI's investigation of Hillary
Clinton's use of a private email server while serving as
secretary of state.

"He should take a hard look at what he has
done. And I think it would not be a bad thing for the American
people if he did step down," Sanders told ABC's "This Week" on
Sunday.

Sanders argued that Comey was wrong to publicize the
new evidence about Clinton about a week before the general
election in November, only to announce days later that it
did not change the department's previous decision not to
charge the former secretary of state for mishandling
classified information.

"Comey acted in an outrageous way during the campaign," Sanders
said. "No one can say that this was the decisive and this was
what elected Trump, but clearly his behavior during the campaign
in terms of what he said in the week or two before the election
was unacceptable. And it is interesting that he is not doing
investigations about the possible ties between Trump's campaign
and the Russians."

Sanders comments came just days after the FBI's independent
internal watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General,
announced it would review Comey's actions and rule
whether there was misconduct in the way the
department handled Clinton's email investigation.

After the election, Clinton herself partially blamed Comey for
her loss to President-elect Donald Trump.

"There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not
successful," Clinton
said on a call with donors in November. She added: "Our
analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts that were
groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum."

Indeed, on Thursday many of the former secretary of state's top
campaign staffers
heralded the OIG's move to examine Comey's conduct.

"We need the FBI to be independent, to not have a reputation for
behaving in a partisan manner, but I think that all of that was
really called in the question in the way that the FBI handled
this matter in the closing weeks of the campaign," former Clinton
press secretary Brian Fallon
told MSNBC last week.